First-person shooters with a sci-fi slant are all-too common these days, but the way XCOM takes a serene 1950s America suburban setting and tears it all to hell with an invasion of black-oil alien creatures has us pumped to dig into this experience that offers a slick new twist on the genre. There's no solid release date for the horrific invasion just yet. Still, we hope to be killing it with fire shortly.

Nathan Drake returns for another round of adventure and treasure hunting in remote locales. This latest trek into the wilds sees Drake partnering with his good friend Victor "Skully" Sullivan to venture deep into the arid desert in search of a lost city buried beneath the sands. With an unruly order of thugs seeking to stop them, the duo has work cut out for them. Like the past two titles, Uncharted 3 promises to dish out one grand escapade.

No longer a guys-only party, this grand finale to the intense Gears of War trilogy is packing gritty ladies with big guns and lots of bold attitude. But that's not all: new monstrosities to chainsaw through, upgraded online multiplayer modes, and promise of a gripping story wrap-up are only a few of the reasons why this game is locked and loaded on our radars for 2011. Epic has maintained a "go big or go home" attitude with the first two games in the series, and we can expect no less from GoW 3.

The decimated streets of a demolished New York City offer a new dynamic battlefield for high-tech conflict in this first non-PC exclusive entry in one of the slickest first-person shooters franchises around. Among the cooler updates, Crysis 2 will feature a fully revamped nanosuit packed with upgraded powers and a more vertically oriented landscape to explore that encourages scaling buildings and diving through alleys alike. The urban jungle is about to heat up in this next explosive installment.

Ah GLaDOS, we've missed you dear old friend. Portal was one of the most charming, demented, and clever games released on PC in recent memory, and it looks like this crazy sequel is about to blow the original out of the water with new tools, a new array of chatty droid companions, an all-new separate cooperative multiplayer campaign, and plenty of the series' trademark passive-aggressive robotic hilariousness.

By Nathan MeunierCCC
Freelance Writer

*The views expressed within this article are solely the opinion of the author and do not express the views held by Cheat Code Central.*